CLOUDY DAY

Bribery Alleged at Murdoch’s Sun

Carl Court, AFP / Getty Images

Recent evidence presented in the Leveson inquiry gave Rupert Murdoch a stark reminder of how much the old reputation of phone hacking and other allegedly corrupt practices still haunts his newspapers.

Police in the United Kingdom have said that The Sun, a British tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., had a “culture ... of illegal payments.” A deputy assistant commissioner for London Metropolitan police said Monday that journalists at the tabloid were in the habit of paying public officials for tips. Investigations into the paper and its practices are ongoing, even as Murdoch continues to tout a new weekend edition of the paper, The Sun on Sunday. The London investigators said that one official allegedly received the equivalent of $127,000 over several years.